By IANS
London : Paris-based painter Syed Haider Raza's work 'La Terre' trumped a Christie's Indian Art auction here, fetching 720,000 pounds ($1.4 million), as M.F. Husain watched an older work fetch a fifth less.
Raza's 1985 painting was estimated at 400,000-600,000 pounds.
M.F. Husain, 92, who flew from Dubai to London to watch the sale, could not have been completely dissatisfied to see his 1960 untitled work go for 132,000 pounds. It had been estimated at 100,000-150,000 pounds.
Other prominent painters featured at the auction included Vasudev Gaitonde, whose 1968 sage green abstract went for 490,400 pounds; Francis Newton Souza whose 'Landscape with Planet' fetched 311,200 pounds; and Tyeb Mehta, whose 1961 untitled nude fetched 156,000 pounds, much more than Christie's estimate of 40,000-60,000 pounds.
Paintings by young artists Subodh Gupta, Justin Ponmany and Talha Rathore were also snapped up.
Christie's made a total of 4,471,200 pounds from the auction.
"The Indian market is correcting and consolidating itself," said a collector and trader in the auction room who felt the auction didn't have too much to boast about.